Music Review

Health & Happiness Shows

EW's GRADE
A

Details Lead Performance: Hank Williams; Genre: Country

In the fall of 1949, Hank Williams recorded his first syndicated radio series, hoping to bolster his burgeoning singing career. Sponsored by the medicinal tonic Hadacol (hence the title, Health and Happiness Shows), the shows highlight the best of Williams: his maudlin songs of failed love and unrelenting misery strung together with a molassified hee-haw patter. Soon after the H&H shows, Williams became a god in the South, then throughout the world. These transcriptions find the simple man behind the myth.

Originally posted May 28, 1993 Published in issue #172 May 28, 1993 Order article reprints

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